Hideshi Hino was born in China to Japanese immigrant workers in Manchuria just when Japan surrendered at the end of World War II and the vengeful anti-Japanese movement in China. His family had no choice but to escape to Japan before being lynched by Chinese civilians, so his town gathered up everybody and started to make their move to the remaining internationally governed harbours.

Hino has claimed that he was nearly killed en route to Japan by his fellow townspeople during the evacuation from China.
Some of his manga have been based on his life and its events; for example his grandfather was a real life Yakuza and his father used to be a pig farmer with a spider tattoo on his back. Hino has depicted these in his manga many times (as in Panorama of Hell).

Although originally eyeing a job in the film industry, the works of manga legends Shigeru Sugiura and Yoshiharu Tsuge inspired the young Hino to express himself in the medium of manga instead. He originally began in doujinshi, and his first professional work was published in Osamu Tezuka's experimental manga magazine COM in 1967. With appearances in Garo and the serialized "Hideshi Hino's Shocking Theater" coming out in 1971, his bizarre world of deviant killers, grotesque beasts, and decaying corpses was firmly established.